September 26, 2017 – COWI Lunch and Learn

On September 26, UBC CSCE hosted Keith Kirkwood from COWI Engineering to present on the Angus L. MacDonald Bridge project located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is the sister bridge of the Lions Gate Bridge in Downtown Vancouver. As the deck had reached the end of its functional lifespan COWI was hired to renovate the bridge deck. The first major challenge Keith highlighted was how they plan to replace the deck while keeping the bridge completely open for drivers. The solution the contractors used was to cut sections of the deck during the weekend and overnight, lowering it by rail crane into the river below where it would be moved out of the way and the new deck would be raised in place and connected to the existing deck for traffic to run the next day. the next issue was raising the bridge deck 3m in the center to allow bigger ships to pass underneath into the dock, which they corrected by adjusting the hangers connecting the deck to the main line of the suspension bridge. Due to the nature of the project COWI designed the entire erection engineering process and monitored it with continuous simulations. Overall the lecture provided great insight on the challenges one can face while renovating a bridge and practical solutions to those problems. We would like to again thank Kieth Kirkwood for providing this presentation for our student members.